Why and how do companies remember their past in terms of history and tradition? This book empirically explores the phenomenon of organizational remembrance at the German automobile company AUDI AG from a cultural perspective. By dissecting the relationships between memory, identity, and image in a business setting, this innovative ethnographic study makes sense of the complex cultural forces at work in the corporate handling of the past, the present, and the future.
1 Introduction
In an increasingly fast-paced economy, many business organizations idolize innovativeness and the ability to foresee changes in the marketplace as key qualities in the competitive struggle for garnering profit. In this regard, the category of time is widely envisioned as a scarce and highly valuable resource which is integral to business. Time is measured, planned, wasted, saved, and accounted for (Hassard, 1996), which Benjamin Franklin’s (1748) well-known dictum “Remember that time is money” (as cited in Weinrich, 2008, p. 92) demonstrates.
When it comes to time modes, however, the past, the present, and the future are not on equal footing. Going hand in hand with “processes of acceleration” (Rosa, 2013, p. 17) ¹ that can be observed in various domains of life, modern management principles are built upon ideas of constant alertness and change. They create an environment permeated by an obsessive concern with the present and the future. These time modes appear to be forgeable and thus a calculable factor.
The past, in contrast, is commonly ascribed the image of an inalterable monolith no longer worthy of concern. For instance, Burkard Sievers (2009), an organizational psychologist, makes the critical observation that most companies “focus primarily on the relatedness of the present to the future to come” (p. 27). Organizational sociologist Walther Müller-Jentsch (2003) proclaims that modern organizations are “as a matter of principle detached from tradition” (p. 17). Business historian Manfred Grieger (2007) asserts that “[d]ue to current market requirements, companies inevitably act above all as institutions of the present, which do not grant the past any overpowering significance, but which emphasize the opportunity of a new beginning” (pp. 211–212). And cultural theorist Dirk Baecker (1987) claims that the “social system of the economy” operates according to the “premise ‘bygones are bygones,’ systematically treating the past as irrelevant” (p. 519). The overwhelming impression one receives from these commentators is that the past is an utterly neglected topic in the business world.
1.1 When Business Organizations Remember their Past
Despite the prevalence of future-orientation, the phenomenon of “corporate amnesia” Kransdorff (1998, p. 1) – i. e. the blatant disregard of past experiences – does not always take hold in a business environment. Over the last decades it has become more common for business organizations to make statements about their past, cached in terms of ‘history’ and ‘tradition.’
The technology company Robert Bosch GmbH (2011), for instance, which is more than a century old, proclaims that “[f]rom the very beginning, the company’s history has been characterized by its innovative drive and social commitment” (para. 2). The fashion store Peek&Cloppenburg KG (2011) accentuates its “Hanseatic tradition,” declaring that “the qualities of the company are shaped by the attitudes and mind sets which were historically ascribed to the character of Hanseatic merchants” (para. 3). The pharmaceutical producer Merck & Co (2011), on the other hand, states that it “ha[s] a long and rich history of working to improve people’s health and well-being” (para. 2), which makes them “proud of our past” (para. 3). Mercedes-Benz celebrates itself as the “inventor of the automobile” with a “unique tradition” (Daimler AG, 2011b, para. 3). And the automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG (2011) proclaims that “[o]ur history is an important pillar of our identity; it makes ZF distinctive” (para. 3).
In all of these cases, business organizations make implicit and explicit identity claims by establishing a link between the past and the present. Seeking historical legitimization for their contemporary conduct, they claim to possess long-standing experience and expertise. They thus confer upon their organizations a sense of stability, perseverance, and tenacity, and imply a uniqueness of identity based on their past as a means of standing out in the marketplace.
References to the corporate past are not restricted to verbal formulations of corporate identity claims, though. The past can be represented through a vast range of different forms: Companies publish elaborate corporate history books, as is the case with Zeppelin GmbH (Seibold, 2009) or Hugo Boss AG (Köster, 2011). They publicly celebrate anniversaries, as computer giant IBM (Forbes, 2011, August 6) or automaker Chevrolet (New York Times, 2011, October 21) demonstrated with their centennials in 2011. They establish corporate history departments that call themselves “both the memory and the soul” of the company (BMW Group Classic, 2012, para. 2). Car manufacturers, in particular, publicly celebrate their portfolio of vintage motor vehicles as a continuous stream of innovations across time, as Daimler AG (2011a) so aptly demonstrates.
The examples go on: companies install memorial plaques to commemorate deceased employees, as can be seen in the case of the finance group Lloyds TSB (Gough, 2004). Company museums, like the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (Vitra Design Stiftung gGmbH, 2011), are sometimes erected, and historical exhibitions, such as the “Milestones of refreshment” exhibition at the “World of Coca Cola” visitor center in Atlanta, USA (The Coca Cola Company, 2011), put together. Companies set up historical archives, as with the bank Wells Fargo (Niebuhr Eulenberg, 1984), and they launch historical associations dedicated to research of the corporate past, such as Deutsche Bank AG (2009) with its Historische Gesellschaft der Deutschen Bank e.V. (cf. Schug, 2003).
These examples suggest that there are some business organizations that do not live exclusively in the “extended present” (Sievers, 2009, p. 27). On the contrary, these cases feature organizations that elect to represent and instrumentalize their past. According to Charlotte Linde (2009), these companies have found “ways of working the past: invoking and retelling parts of the past for present purposes” (p. 3). Speaking in more metaphorical terms, these companies have acquired a ‘memory.’
A new field of research called organizational memory studies devoted to scrutinizing this greater phenomenon has slowly emerged in the last decades (e. g., Casey, 1997; Casey & Olivera, 2011; Rowlinson, Booth, Clark, Delahaye, & Procter, 2010;Walsh & Ungson, 1991). Likewise, the field of organizational culture and organizational identity studies is tentatively becoming more interested in the role a shared past plays in creating a community among the workforce (e.g., Schultz & Hernes, 2010, 2013).
In the more practically oriented corporate sphere, on the other hand, a handful of marketing scholars are touting the merits of history management for image building in the external sphere (e. g., Danilov, 1992; Diez & Tauch, 2008; Foster, Suddaby, Minkus, & Wiebe, 2011; Herbrand & Röhrig, 2006; Schug, 2003).
All of these fields are operating with various conceptions of ‘memory’ in organizations while covering different sub-sets of the same problem – namely how and why organizations deal with experiences of the past in the present. Depending on their scope, numerous scholars have approached this question from different angles, and they offer a correspondingly disparate array of explanations. An interdisciplinary discourse about the relationships between memory, identity, and image in business organizations which attempts to synthesize multiple perspectives does not yet exist.
This book is essentially driven by the urge to fill the concrete research gaps identified in a preliminary inquiry that provided a detailed overview of existing literature (viz., Mai, 2009). While these research-worthy gaps will be further discussed in chapter 2, a short rendition provides at least an initial idea of this book’s starting point.
While many individuals in the western world spend a significant amount of time and energy in companies, empirical evidence of how exactly organizational memory is constituted and operates in everyday practice is extremely scarce (Rowlinson et al., 2010). The role of organizational retrospection in real-life business remains untested, and one can, at best, only form hypotheses with regards to its functioning. Likewise, claims about the effective coordination and control of memory in a corporate setting can be taken with a grain of salt as long as proclamations of cause and effect are not backed up by proper empirical research.
Second, memory is often treated as something an organization has rather than what it does (Casey & Olivera, 2011). This approach reflects a strong degree of actor-detachment, because it disregards human interactions occurring in the social sphere of the organization. In reply to this critique, Feldman and Feldman (2006) suggest a major theoretical shift to “organizational remembering” as a “collective, historically and culturally situated practice” (p. 880) – an idea that this study picks up and implements. However, more pronounced insights into the cultural fabric, social nature, and multiplicity of such practice(s) are, in large part, missing.
Third, the majority of scholarly inquiries do not differentiate between the formal side of what is officially recollected in the name of the company and the informal side that occurs on the ordinary member level. How employees are themselves influenced by the company in their historical thinking and the conceptualization of an organizational self through organizational remembrance is an under-researched topic – especially when it comes to the internal impact of corporate history departments and museums (cf. Nissley & Casey, 2002). In consequence, the contingencies inherent to the formal and informal dimensions are virtually unknown.
Fourth, scholarly inquiries into organizational memory are often limited to physical knowledge storage systems such as archives (e.g., Weaver & Bishop, 1974), or – in the rare case that the social component of human interaction is taken into consideration – to the aspect of oral narratives solicited from employees (e.g., Linde, 2009). The existence of other cultural forms in the material, social, and mental dimensions of organizational life has not been accounted for in a holistic way yet (cf. Feldman & Feldman, 2006).
Fifth, organizational culture and identity studies have long perpetuated the belief in an “indelible link between history and identity” (Gioia, Corley, & Fabbri, 2002, p. 62). They assume that the members of an organization automatically have a “shared history” (Schein, 2004, p. 11), the sole existence of which conjures up a common identity. Unfortunately, it remains unclear where members’ conceptualizations of a shared history emerge in the first place, and what role collectively performed acts of retrospection play in this regard. Moreover, conceptual differentiation is missing between the past in its course and history as a manmade representation of the past shaped by contemporary needs (cf. Boia, 2003; White, 1987). An inquiry into the creative, malleable side of what is recalled, in light of present identity concerns, has been neglected thus far (Booth & Rowlinson, 2006; Rowlinson et al., 2010).
And sixth, the discourse on organizational memory happens to be detached from newer findings brought forward by its interdisciplinary counterpart, collective/cultural memory studies (e. g., Erll, 2011; Erll & Nünning, 2008; Olick, 1999, 2008a, 2008b; Olick & Robbins, 1998; Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011).
And the latter field has not yet come to think of business organizations as a viable object of study. An interdisciplinary link between both fields that fruitfully builds upon the latest research is lacking. The following section outlines what this book aims to achieve in light of these research gaps.
1.2 Aims, Approach, and Structure
This book empirically explores the phenomenon of organizational remembrance from a holistic cultural perspective. Grounded in theory and empirical investigation alike, it attempts to uncover the relationships between memory/remembrance, identity, and image in a corporate setting. All empirical findings are based on a twelve-month ethnographic case study, which was conducted at the headquarters of the automobile company AUDI AG in Ingolstadt, Germany.
Framing itself at the most abstract level as engaging in organizational cultures of remembrance, this study provides an integrated, hands-on investigation of the colorful interplay between different actor groups, their particular interests, practices, media, mental models, and vehicles of remembrance, through which the corporate past is recollected in everyday business.With the techniques provided by ethnographic research, the phenomenon of organizational remembrance leaves the hypothetical sphere, and its complex cultural ramifications become more palpable.
The greater scope of this study is twofold. On the one hand, it aims at scrutinizing why and how a company officially remembers its past in terms of history. While research primarily focuses on the role of retrospection in making company-related identity claims and creating an organizational community, light is also shed on the rich variety of purposes of organizational remembrance that may lie outside the scope of identity and community creation. Moreover, the goal is to trace the complex ways a company actively ‘works’ its past in practice to pursue these ends (cf. Linde, 2009) – both through professionalized history management, as much as other manners that can be encountered in the workplace. By examining all of these ways with the help of a concept called cultural forms of organizational remembrance, this study seeks to provide insight into how everyday business is intentionally permeated by selectively made references to the past.
On the other hand, this book explores what organizational remembrance does with the people working in a company, and, in turn, how employees process representations of the corporate past. More specifically, it addresses how retrospective practices affect members ‘on the job,’ how employees construct a collective organizational self in light of yesteryear, and how representations of the past can be transformed to suit current needs. Altogether, the depth of inquiry is meant to account both for what happens on the formal business level, as well as on the sociocultural micro-level of mundane organizational life.
Following this introduction, which outlined the greater phenomenon of organizational remembrance and the primary focus of research, chapter 2 presents the theoretical framework according to which empirical fieldwork was carried out. It provides an interdisciplinary overview of the current state of relevant research, and specifies the aforementioned research gaps.
More importantly, the framework breaks down the individual components of the cultural perspective developed for empirical research. It builds upon an interdisciplinary mix of concepts from organization studies, organizational culture studies, organizational identity studies, organizational memory studies, and collective/cultural memory studies. Applying an abductive methodology, only those publications and working concepts are explicated that constituted the theoretical knowledge available prior to starting empirical fieldwork. In this way, I hope to account for the processual nature of qualitative research, making the scientific creation of knowledge more transparent and traceable.
First, a range of key qualities of modern business organizations are explained that are relevant to the scope of this study. The focus is then directed to what it means to study cultural phenomena in organizational settings. The shift entails that the concepts of organizational identity and image are addressed as cultural categories. Subsequently, the study of memory in organizations is reviewed, showing tentative links to concepts of culture, identity, and image. Lastly, a heuristic concept called organizational cultures of remembrance is presented as a nexus that integrates the aforementioned key concepts in a complementary fashion.
Chapter 3 breaks down the empirical research design of this study. First, a description is provided of the fieldwork setting. It details facts and figures about the contemporary AUDI AG, clarifies specific units of analysis, and provides an overview of the conditions in which the company was found to operate. Second, this is complemented by a compact version of AUDI AG’s corporate history to contextualize the insights produced in this study. Third, the mix of qualitative methods utilized during fieldwork is explained. A short discussion of the methodology of abduction and the working paradigms of organizational ethnography is followed by a more detailed discussion of ethnographic research methods. It provides insight into how empirical data was generated, analyzed, and triangulated. Last, a self-reflexive account of my ethnographic experience can be found in this chapter, dealing with the different stages of fieldwork as an interactive social process between the researcher and the company.
The next chapters constitute the empirical core of this book. They present a multifaceted collection of case studies that demonstrate the actual workings of organizational remembrance in practice, as well as their cultural ramifications, impact on the workforce, and relationships with organizational identity and image.
Chapter 4 sets the broader scene by tracing who inside AUDI AG was officially managing the corporate past in terms of history and tradition. In particular, the organizational structure of the corporate history department, Audi Tradition, is dissected and its role as the company’s institutionalized carrier of organizational remembrance described. Special attention is given to which elements of the corporate past the department recollected in which ways, and which elements were muted or forgotten. The highly selective and constructed character of official organizational remembrance becomes visible.
Because the corporate past is not ‘worked’ merely for its own sake, chapter 5 clarifies what purposes of organizational remembrance the company pursued. The construction of organizational identity in public relations and the shaping of a brand image in marketing receive special attention, yet the scope of inquiry is not limited to this alone. By uncovering the multiplicity of purposes, this book demonstrates why remembering the corporate past matters for a company in a number of different ways. I argue that AUDI AG did, in fact, strategically reactivate elements of its past to secure the company’s economic existence in the future. In this regard, the chapter also unravels the complex web of practices, media, tools, sites, and mental models through which the corporate past has been reconstructed, collectively recalled, and instrumentalized in the present. Identified as cultural forms of organizational remembrance, these forms classify the ways professional retrospection actually takes place in a corporate setting.
Chapter 6 shows that a corporate history department is not necessarily the only entity recollecting and refashioning a company’s past. As well as shedding light on the heterogeneous mix of stakeholders of the corporate past, attention is directed to both their common and diverging interests. By tracing their networkbased relationships, interactions, collaborations, and conflicts, the contingencies of remembrance in and around a corporate setting become visible.
Chapter 7 argues that the way organizational remembrance works in the present underlies a historical process of evolution and differentiation. The case of AUDI AG exemplifies why and how a company gradually overcomes forgetting and begins remembering in the first place. However, one should not assume that the phenomenon of organizational remembrance detracts from or counteracts a firm’s obsession with the future. Therefore, the notion of an economic cycle of organizational remembrance is put forth to explain this.
A greater shift in scope is introduced in chapter 8. Instead of focusing on the macro level of the corporation, attention is drawn to the socio-cultural microlevel of its members. More specifically, the impact organizational remembrance has on the workforce is scrutinized by pointing out a particular phenomenon – the emergence of a historical consciousness among staff. After tracing what factors influence the development process, it is argued that historical consciousness provides an important mental resource which shapes a member’s convictions about the company, work, and a collective organizational self.
Picking up on this topic, chapter 9 specifies how common knowledge about the corporate past affects members’ construal of organizational reality. A selection of cases demonstrates that views on company life, convictions regarding how the company ‘really works,’ what is considered to be the ‘norm’ on the office floor, and how members behave on the job are deeply rooted in collectively available representations of the corporate past.
The eponymous core of this book, chapter 10 addresses how members’ constructions of organizational identity are inherently crafted through recollections of the corporate past. Multiple case studies help to grasp the complexity, multifacetedness, creativity, and dynamism of the processes involved when members ascribe meaning to their company and identify with aspects of it in a collectivizing sense. It is argued that the workforce pursues the fulfillment of a range of identity needs by making distinct references to the corporate past. In addition to coping with identity threats, shared mental pictures of historical images serve as important contrast foils and differentiators of time through which the workforce gains a concrete sense of organizational identity. Binding conceptions of a collective organizational self are anchored in recollections of historical experiences. They provide a sense of stability, while leaving room for adaptation to future concerns.
Finally, a conclusion is provided in chapter 11, which once again summarizes and discusses the key findings of this empirical study. By recontextualizing my findings with those of other scholars, it is possible to make more general inferences about the workings of, and relationships between, organizational remembrance, identity, and image. Readers who are interested in the practical side of professionally ‘working’ the past, on the other hand, will find a section specifically dedicated to this, detailing implications for managerial practice. Of course, every study also has its limitations. These are disclosed in the last section, which is followed by an outlook on future research.
Altogether, this book hopes to deliver an insightful, interdisciplinary account that fuses a number of theoretical streams with empirical insights to generate an understanding of why and how remembering the past substantially matters in a corporate context, both for business and the workforce.
